Forrester's Marketing Forum 2010

An influential consumer starts to rant about your brand on her widely read blog. Could you turn her from a detractor to a promoter before she does too much damage? Your best enterprise buyers want an unprecedented combination of features and services at a lower price. Would you uncover this insight in time to act before your strongest competitor?

Unfortunately, the answer is too often no. If you’re like most marketers, your intention to react with quickness and quality outpaces your ability. Why? A key reason is that building an adaptive marketing organization requires renewed investment in technology and process change, and with budgets down 20% or more over the past year, marketers’ hands are tied. But that will change soon. Sixty-one percent of marketers surveyed in the summer of 2009 believe that marketing technology is a key component of the organization’s success, and their 2010 technology adoption plans reflect this belief.

So what else stands in the way? Classic marketing practices prioritize stability over flexibility, leaving marketers ill-equipped to cope with — much less thrive on — change. Flagrant examples include: 1) budgets that are mere tweaks of last year’s spend and don’t reflect the real marketing mix; 2) media upfronts that lock down ad funds, leaving little for opportunistic buys; and 3) multiyear agency and distribution partnerships that are predictable but rarely innovative.